Wednesday, March 21, 2007

(New Orleans)—Professor Joel Kovel of Bard College will speak on Monday, March 26, at 7:30 p.m., in Miller Hall, room 114, at Loyola University New Orleans, on the topic "Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine."

Kovel's talk will be based on his new book of that title. In his book, he argues that Zionism and democracy are essentially incompatible and offers an account of Zionism that integrates psychological, political, cultural, economic, and ideological dimensions. He contends that a two-state solution concedes too much to regressive forces of nationalism, which is at the root of continued conflict.

Kovel is a professor at Bard College, in addition to being well-known as a writer and editor. His books include, White Racism, The Complete Guide to Therapy, The Age of Desire, History and Spirit, and The Enemy of Nature.

This event is sponsored by the Loyola Department of Humanities. For further information, please contact Prof. John Clark at (504) 865-2790 or clark@loyno.edu

Loyola University New Orleans is a Jesuit-Catholic institution with a total student enrollment of 4,724 including 800 law students.###

Posted: 3/20/07

Over winter break, I met a man whose home had been demolished twice by American-made Caterpillar brand armored bulldozers. Not because the structures were unsafe or because the man is a terrorist, but simply because those were the orders of the soldiers who are occupying his country with arms, helicopter gunships and other equipment provided by the United States.

Yet this same man, against whom people have inflicted so much groundless cruelty, showed more hospitality toward me than anyone else I've known, even people in much richer parts of the world than the West Bank. His family served us an enormous dinner of maqlubeh (a dish of chicken, rice and cauliflower), gave five foreigners beds to sleep in, served us another enormous breakfast the next morning and even rode with us in our taxi until we arrived back in downtown Hebron. Three of us were from the country that provided the bulldozers that had destroyed his home twice.

The hospitality of this man and his family was one of the highlights of the time I spent in Israel and Palestine with Christian Peacemaker Teams, which promote nonviolence and mutual dialogue in conflict areas around the world.

On another day, we visited Bethlehem, also located within the occupied West Bank. To enter the town where Jesus was supposedly born, we had to walk past soldiers carrying American M-16 machine guns, through an inspection facility and through a 25-foot-tall guard tower-laden "security wall" with an enormous sign proclaiming "Peace Be With You."

A few days later, in Hebron, I saw Israeli soldiers arresting a Palestinian man at gunpoint for walking on Shuhada Street, a street built with American aid money for the use of everyone in Hebron. This street may be legally open to anyone, but in practice, only soldiers, Israelis living in illegal settlements and foreigners can use Shuhada Street without risking arrest.

One morning, I watched children pass through military checkpoints and metal detectors on their way to school. Are these children going to grow up believing that it's entirely normal to see soldiers and machine guns every day on the way to and from school, or to arrive at school only to learn that the soldiers haven't allowed the teachers to pass through the checkpoint?

Israel has as much of a right to existence and security as any other nation, but its policies in the West Bank are both illegal under international law and immoral. The U.S. government gives Israel billions of dollars in military aid, allowing these policies to continue. There's nothing wrong with giving aid to Israel, but our country must stop aiding this illegal occupation.

If you agree, call our senators and let them know. Every time a Congressperson hears from a constituent, he or she assumes that 10 more constituents feel the same way but simply haven't spoken up. Small steps like those are part of the path to peace.

East Asian economies need to prepare for a possible collapse of the US dollar, the Asian Development Bank says.

ADB: Possibility of a dollar collapse small but fallout huge

The warning comes as the US trade deficit reaches a record high and global interest rates continue to rise.

Masahiro Kawai, the ADB's head of regional economic integration, said on Tuesday: "Any shock hitting the US economy or the global market may change investors' perceptions given the existing global current account imbalance.

"Our suggestion to Asian countries is: Don't take this continuous financing of the US current account deficit as given. If something happens then East Asian economies have to be prepared."

He said because of the highly interdependent nature of East Asian economies, if countries worked together to allow their currencies to collectively appreciate against a tumbling dollar then the cost of adjustment would be spread.

"The possibility of a US dollar collapse or sharp decline may be small at this point but it would generate very significant turmoil so East Asian economies ... ought to be ready for that."

The Manila-based ADB is working on several indices of Asian currencies that could be helpful to monitor exchange rate movements in the case of a sharp dollar decline, although its main intention is to help develop regional bond markets.

Political sensitivities

However, the ADB is still trying to decide which currencies to include in this Asian Currency Unit (ACU) amid political sensitivities about the inclusion of the Taiwan dollar given China's claim over the island.

The ADB had apparently been aiming to launch the ACU - a weighted basket of Asian currencies - before the bank's annual meeting in May, but Kawai said this would not be possible.

He said there was no specific launch date yet but hopefully it would be unveiled "in the next few months".

But Kawai played down suggestions that the ACU could foreshadow a single Asian currency like the European Currency Unit (ECU), which existed for two decades before the creation of the euro in 1999.

He said: "The ECU had an official status but the ACU has no such official status. We are not in the position to decide whether this should become a real currency or not."

Last month, in Air Force, the journal of the Air Force Association, Patrick Casey, a criminal lawyer, and his father, Aloysius Casey, a retired Air Force lieutenant general, unravelled the truth of one of the demoralizing stories that, three decades ago, marked the end of a losing war. In April, 1972, the Pentagon announced that Air Force General John D. Lavelle, the commander of all air operations in Vietnam, was retiring for “personal and health reasons.” In fact, as it became clear over the next two months, he had been relieved of his command and forced to retire—demoted by two ranks—after an internal inquiry determined that he had ordered bombing attacks on unauthorized targets in North Vietnam.

The news of Lavelle’s dismissal was followed by several hearings before the Senate Armed Services Committee and two Pentagon investigations. At that stage of the war, American pilots were authorized to fire on surface-to-air-missile sites and their radar in the North—but only after they had been fired upon or electronically engaged. Once that happened, a rule of engagement known as “protective reaction” came into play, and the missiles and radar became fair game. During the hearings, many Air Force pilots and intelligence personnel came forward to say that they had bombed unauthorized targets and then falsely reported those attacks as “protective reaction”—a phrase that entered the Vietnam lexicon, alongside “free-fire zones” and “pacification.” From late 1971 to early 1972, more than half the missions flown over North Vietnam—twenty-eight missions, involving a hundred and forty-seven flights—had been in violation of the rules of engagement.

I tracked Lavelle down after his firing, and, with his help, published an account of those missions, in the Times, on June 11, 1972. Lavelle told me that he had bombed radar sites, air fields, petroleum storage tanks, and other targets in the North without express orders. I also reported that he had verbal instructions that he thought carried an “implied” authorization. In the early fall, as the Pentagon continued to insist that Lavelle “alone was responsible for the air raids,” he told the Armed Services Committee that he had discussed the SAM sites and radars with Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird and various senior commanders, including Army General Creighton T. Abrams, who was then in charge of the over-all war effort. Lavelle said that he and Abrams had agreed that the Air Force could not “just stand around” and wait until a plane was shot down. Abrams denied this; he told the committee that he had approved one early attack that was subsequently determined to be in violation of the rules of engagement, but had not known of any other such missions. (Lavelle later stated that Laird had encouraged him to make a “liberal interpretation” of the rules, and had promised to “back me up.”)

The issue of authorization was lost amid bigger stories—Richard Nixon’s reëlection, the collapse of the Paris peace agreement, and the spreading Watergate scandal—and was never resolved. Lavelle and twenty-three others were accused of court-martial offenses, but the Secretary of the Air Force found no cause to take further action. (“When was the last time you heard of a four-star general being court-martialled?” Lavelle said to me, when we first talked.) In 1978, Lavelle gave an extensive interview to the Office of Air Force History, in which he said that he should not have acted on the basis of private assurances that he would be supported if the missions became known. He added, “Somewhere along there we just should have said, ‘Hey, either fight it or quit, but let’s not waste all the money and the lives the way we are doing it.’ ” A year later, Lavelle died, at the age of sixty-two.

Patrick and Aloysius Casey discovered the story behind the protective reaction attacks while researching a biography of a pilot who served under Lavelle. The authorization came from the Oval Office; the Caseys found the evidence that Lavelle had done and continued to do what the President wanted in recently released Nixon White House tapes, and they gave me a copy of their transcripts. On February 3, 1972, President Nixon; Henry Kissinger, the national-security adviser; and Ellsworth Bunker, the Ambassador to South Vietnam, were discussing the war. “The one thing both General Abrams and I want is . . . authority to bomb these SAM sites,” Bunker said. Nixon had a solution: “I think protective reaction should include the right to hit SAM sites. I am simply saying that we expand the definition of protective reaction to mean preventive reaction where a SAM site is concerned. . . . Who knows or would say they didn’t fire?” It was agreed that Abrams would be told. “Needless to say,” Nixon cautioned, “he is to call all of these things protective reaction.” Kissinger worried about a leak to the press. The President said to Bunker, “I want you to tell Abrams when you get back that he is to tell the military not to put out extensive briefings with regard to our military activities. . . . And if it does get out, he is to say it’s a protective-reaction strike.”

On June 14th, shortly after my first article on the bombings appeared in the Times, Nixon said to Kissinger, “This damned Laird.” He was referring to Laird’s decision to dismiss Lavelle. “Why did he even remove him? . . . I don’t want a man persecuted for doing what he thought was right.” Kissinger was quick to criticize the generals: “Of course the military are impossible, too. . . . They turn on each other like rats.” Nixon thought that he had been double-crossed. “Laird knows goddam well. . . . I told him, ‘I said it’s protective reaction.’ He winks, he says, ‘Oh, I understand.’ ” Kissinger: “Yeah, but Laird is pretty vicious.”

Twelve days later, Nixon raised his concerns again. Kissinger said that Nixon had really not changed the rules, because the first raids, in late 1971, were “not protective reaction in a strict sense, it was a punishment for [Hanoi’s] acts and that had to be made clear.” He added, “I don’t think Lavelle was pushed into anything. I think Lavelle did it on an unauthorized basis.” “You do?” the President asked. Kissinger continued, “In any event you should stay out of it, Mr. President.” Nixon agreed, more or less: “Well, I suppose . . . they”—the Democrats—“figure, Lavelle, it is just another card [like] the bugging of the [Democratic] National Committee.”

Finally, on October 23rd, Nixon told General Alexander Haig, Kissinger’s deputy, “All this goddam crap about Lavelle. I feel sorry for that fellow because you and I know we did approve to Laird of ‘protective reaction’ as being very liberal.” He added, “He never would have had to falsify any records if we had not had rules out that we were not to bomb the North.”

We have become inured to the vulgarity, deceit, and distrust that mark the Nixon tapes. But the Lavelle incident has a special resonance: in the midst of a disastrous and unpopular war, a President and his closest confederates authorized actions in violation of both the rules and their own stated policies. We’ll never know exactly what has been said in George W. Bush’s Oval Office, but there are parallels with the Nixon White House. One who has come to understand them is Robert Pursley, the Air Force lieutenant general who was Laird’s military assistant. Laird, who will publish a memoir next year, insists, “I did not know they were breaking the rules or lying about coördinates.” Pursley said last week that it was Laird’s office that noticed the increase in bombing missions over North Vietnam and questioned the Joint Chiefs of Staff about the authority used to justify it, which led to the Pentagon’s first, internal inquiry. Pursley also told me, “I believe Lavelle was guilty of poor judgment, but Nixon enhanced the issue by saying, ‘Do what you need to do.’ That’s what’s wrong with us today. The President is just diminishing what holds the military together by saying forget the ethics—we’ll do whatever we have to do. It’s the stuff from which Walter Reed and Abu Ghraib are born.”

The Cheney speech to AIPAC– reassuring militant rightwingers in Israel and the US that America is leaning forward on Iran, and that we are never leaving Iraq – was filled with honesty and conviction, and gives us a clear window into the administration's thinking.

Cheney's description of terrorists is somewhat emotional and overblown. Calling them "freedom's enemies," he comes dangerously close to describing this administration's id. His emphasis on one-side’s victims in last summer's war with Lebanon, and his proud silence on the thousands killed, injured, made homeless and jobless by American weaponry is also understandable as he speaks to the AIPAC audience. His "three myths" on Iraq and the so-called war on terror are sermons to a choir that raises its voice demanding America be not a policeman in the Middle East, not an inspiration, but a blustering and imbecilic bodyguard.

But the real truth in Cheney's speech is found in his sense of urgency. Cheney exhorts Congress to remember 9-11 and damns it for failing to subsume its every decision to the maintenance of the administration's cultural mythology of that day. He rails at the idea of time limits in Iraq, and suggests that debate in Washington on the role, objectives and cost of our militarism in the Middle East is counterproductive and allows the "enemy" to "watch the clock and wait us out."

But it is Cheney – not al Qaeda – who is watching the clock now. This former Secretary of Defense understands only too well that the deployment of two battle groups in the Persian Gulf, and the onset of this year's "spring offensive" in Afghanistan both point to a ticking clock – second-generation shock and awe forces require many months of planning, and a massive logistics tail to support even a short-lived coordinated attack. The clock is indeed ticking, and nothing must get in the way of that. It is not ticking for the occupied Palestinian territories, nor the fractured and dazed Iraqis living out some kind of neo-colonial nightmare. Those efforts are perfectly on track, as hoped for, and AIPAC completely understands this.

It is all about Iran. The U.S. military, from the tone and content of Cheney's speech, is now ready, and the window is open. The administration may actually be a bit behind in building its public case – at least one as plausible as the false case made by this same administration less than five years ago regarding Iraq. Part of this case-making process entails boxing the Congress, and preventing that body from asserting its collective intellect, refreshing its own collective familiarity with truth, justice, reality and even the Constitution. Iran is back on the table, and the House warning language on Iran stricken.

70% of the American public, and most of the soldiers and Marines in Iraq understand the idiocy, the pointlessness and shoddy logic of this alter-ego "war" we are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, soon Iran and perhaps even Syria. This majority of Americans are beginning to hate Dick Cheney and George W. Bush for what they are doing to our own nation. But the 70% in this country have no important conferences for the political leadership, they have no lobbyists, they have no deep pockets, and they have no rabidly confident sense that they alone have all the answers to the world's problems. AIPAC, on the other hand, has all these things.

And soon, it is likely they'll have their desired attacks on Iran. We may soon hear of an accident, an incursion, or a purported attack on our forces. That provocation will force the President to bomb until our bombs run out, and will give the Democrats one more opportunity to prove their abject fealty to war. From what we are hearing of this year's AIPAC conference, it will be up to a few honest and courageous souls in the Senate, or a revolt of the generals, to stop America's next war.

The current issue of J., the Jewish news weekly of Northern California, has an illuminating article on the misguided agenda of AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The article describes AIPAC’s “consensus issue” as Iran’s alleged nuclear threat, and states how Dick Cheney and others won applause by linking the Iraq war to combating the “menace that is posed by the Iranian regime.” But AIPAC members appear to have forgotten that the chief enemy of Iran was Saddam Hussein, who the U.S. overthrew to install an pro-Iranian Iraqi government. And Iran’s other chief opponent in the region was the Taliban of Afghanistan, also overthrown by the Bush Administration. With half the US Senate and more than half of the House attending AIPAC’s dinner, you would think that someone would have offered the group a recent history lesson.

While progressives frequently criticize AIPAC, nobody has accused the group of being politically naïve. But that’s the only conclusion that can be reached after many of the group’s members gave huge applause to the Bush Administration warmongers who linked the Iraq war and “surge” to the struggle to contain Iran.

Bush’s role in eliminating Iran’s enemies is undisputed, but the media has failed to connect the Iraq war to White House claims that the Iranian “threat” is escalating. Nor have many politicians. For example, longtime Iraq war backer Hilary Clinton announced last week that American should keep troops permanently in Iraq, precisely because of this alleged threat from Iran.

But the media may finally be catching on. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote a scathing column on March 20 describing how the Iraq war has empowered Iran. In “Iran’s Operative in the White House,” Kristof wondered if Dick Cheney is “an Iranian mole,” given how much his agenda has helped Iran.

As Kristof puts it in describing the U.S. invasion and the pro-Iranian policies that followed, “If Iran’s ayatollahs had written the script, they couldn’t have done better---so maybe they did write the script…”

Kristof has never been accused of being an Israel-basher. And he does not connect his analysis of how “we fought Iraq and Iran won” to AIPAC’s recent convention.

But what in heavens has happened to Israel’s hawkish wing both at home and in the United States? Has the same intellectual debilitation that has destroyed the conservative movement in America struck hard-line, pro-war Israel backers as well?

The United States failure in Iraq, and Israel’s acknowledged disastrous war in Lebanon, shows that on Middle Eastern strategic issues, neither AIPAC nor Joe Lieberman speak for America or Israel’s best interests.

As Kristof puts it, “our national interests are as vulnerable to incompetence as to malicious damage.” By continuing to endorse the US war in Iraq, and America’s propping up of a pro-Iranian, anti-Israel government, AIPAC has descended to a level of strategic incompetence likely surprising to even its harshest detractors.

Robert Lady, the former CIA chief in Milan, has gone into hiding. He is the subject of an extradition order from Italian authorities for the role he played in the kidnapping of radical Muslim cleric Abu Omar in Milan. Washington is seeking to derail the trial -- perhaps because Condoleezza Rice may have given the operation the green light.

Robert Seldon Lady has reason for hope again. Maybe he will see farm again -- nestled as it is in the soft hills of Penango, a small town in northern Italy. He's had to leave everything there: his antique furniture, his books, the wine and the family photos. To this day, he continues to pay his $4,000 mortgage.

Lady is CIA's former Milan bureau chief. After 24 years with the agency, he had planned to retire in Penango. But now he's become a bit of a vagabond instead. He was in Florida last, but he reportedly moved on already. The only place the former agent can feel truly safe is the United States, now that an Italian court has issued an arrest warrant for him -- just as it has done for 25 of his colleagues, who are said to have been involved in the Feb. 17, 2003 abduction of radical Muslim cleric Abu Omar along Via Guerzoni in downtown Milan.

The suspects are expected to be tried, in absentia, in June at Milan's Palace of Justice in what will amount to the world's first-ever trial against CIA agents accused of kidnapping. Until very recently, it seemed certain that the case would move ahead. But last week the Italian government asked the country's highest justices at the constitutional court to determine whether the trial could proceed. This has fueled hope for Seldon and, indeed, the entire US administration, that a legal drama might still be prevented.

THE ABU OMAR KIDNAPPING CASE

Abu Omar's Abduction in Milan: "The Only Thing They Cared About Was That I Didn't Die"

"It was a sunny midday on Feb. 17, 2003. I was on the way from my apartment to the mosque, which was only about a kilometer (0.6 miles) away. There was nothing unusual to be seen. I walked through Via Guerzoni as usual, past small stores. The only thing that attracted my attention was a white delivery van by the side of the road, which I had never seen there before. My wife and I had already suspected for some time that we were under surveillance. Cars kept following us, or at least we thought so. Also, the phone often rang at home and in the mosque, and no one could be heard on the other line when we replied. We assumed the Italian intelligence agency was observing us because I often ranted against the Americans and the imminent war against Iraq." mehr...

Abu Omar's Arrival in Cairo: "Work For Us as a Spy -- or Rot in Jail"

"When the jet plane landed, I was still dazed. The flight took seven hours -- but that's just an estimate. My body felt completely stiff. The circulation in my arms and legs had been cut off by the plastic cuffs, but I was still in severe pain. Someone cut through the cuffs around my legs and led me down a set of stairs. I heard a voice from below. A man called out to me in Arabic to come down. I knew from the accent that I was in Egypt." mehr...

The Torture in Egypt: "In the End I Would Have Confessed to Anything"

"After I rejected their offer to work as an informer for them, I was treated like dirt in the prison in Egypt. In the first few months I was locked in a solitary cell and had no contact with lawyers or my family. I was totally shut off from the outside world. Every couple of days I got taken to be interrogated. Egypt's government did what it always does: carry out Washington's orders. The dirty work to get me to talk was to be done here. That's why they tortured me, hooked up electric wires to my genitals, hung me on the wall in a solitary cell for days, subjected me to unbearably loud music through headphones." mehr...

Before the Trial: "Germany is Partly to Blame"

"Germany is also partly to blame. After all, the Germans simply allowed the plane to land in Ramstein and then fly on. I've read that the Germans claim not to have known about the US renditions. I don't believe it. After Sept. 11, everyone knew the United States was doing everything it could, and it has abducted people before. Two people also disappeared from Germany. This practice was known about. I'm sticking to my view: All those who didn't take action against the CIA's secret flights abetted the CIA's activities." mehr...

CIA Activities in Italy: Nothing to Lose

Robert Seldon Lady is the former bureau chief of the CIA in Milan. He wanted to retire to Penango, after 24 years with the agency. But now he's roaming about instead. He was in Florida last, but he's said to already have moved on. His wife has left him. The only place where the former agent can feel truly safe is the United States, now that an Italian court has issued an arrest warrant for him - as it has done for 25 of his colleagues. mehr...

The lawyer representing Marco Mancini, an important behind-the-scenes figure in Italy's SISMI military intelligence agency, argues that state secrets need to be protected. Prior to the operation, the CIA apparently informed SISMI leaders of its plans to kidnap Omar. The lawyer's reference to state secrets implies that the green light for the operation was given not only by Italy's intelligence agencies, but also by members of former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government.

When the persistent public prosecutor's office began investigating, the entire government in Rome claimed to have known nothing whatsoever about the operation. In the meantime, it has become known that the CIA asked Gianfranco Battelli, then SISMI's director, what he thought of abductions of radical Muslims in Italy just a few days after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Battelli, whose retirement was imminent, didn't even register any form of protest. He simply recommended having a word with his successor.

Threats from Washington

Lady's Italian lawyer already suggested declaring the case a matter of national security, thereby burying it for good. And such a decision would suit the Bush administration perfectly. The White House has used all available diplomatic channels to pressure Rome into preventing a public trial. State Department legal advisor John Bellinger, known for his engaging manner, even admonished the Italians that such legal investigations threatened to seriously damage cooperation between US and European intelligence agencies. Besides, Bellinger added, the accused CIA agents would never be extradited.

But according to recent findings brought to light by American journalist Matthew Cole, writing in the March issue of GQ, it's not just the agents involved in the abduction who need to be protected. Those truly responsible are to be found in the higher echelons of the US administration, according to Cole, who claims that current US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice personally approved the operation when she served as President George W. Bush's National Security Advisor. She apparently OKed Abu Omar's abduction and then, according to Cole's report, "fretted" during her meeting with the CIA over how she would inform Bush about the operation.

No official denial has been issued over Cole's allegations -- perhaps in part because there is much to suggest they are true: All truly sensitive CIA operations conducted in the context of the "war on terror" had to be approved by the White House.

Cole is a persevering investigative reporter, who even succeeded in tracking Lady down and talking to him. They've met outside Miami half a dozen times. But even though he would probably have much to reveal, the former CIA agent is reluctant to come forward with the full story -- despite the fact that Italian prosecutors have apparently offered him a deal in return for reporting the details of the CIA operation.

High-tech from Langley

But Lady has said this much: He didn't beleive in the operation from the outset, because it was simply superfluous. Lady knew how doggedly the Italian authorities were already pursuing Abu Omar, having helped them in their investigations himself. He even arranged for the high-tech microphones used during Abu Omar's surveillance to be shipped from Langley. The Italians were at the same time impressed and grateful.

Both the Italians and the CIA considered Abu Omar to be one of the key figures in the Muslim fundamentalist milieu of northern Italy. The CIA thought of him as a kind of recruiting officer for the battlefields of jihad, agitating people to fight first in Kashmir, then in Chechnya and Afghanistan and later in Iraq.

Lady seems to have bet on the Italians getting a grip on Omar by themselves. The generous technological support from Langley was intended to assure the Italian investigations would progress rapidly. The CIA's Rome bureau chief, Jeff Castelli, is reported to have insisted that Omar should be abducted. In the end, his position won out.

So if Lady really thought the operation was a mistake, then why didn't he protest? "The CIA is the vanguard of democracy," he explained in the GQ interview. "It was the greatest job I ever had." Indeed, he wasn't about to disobey his orders -- especially one that might be his last, coming as it did just one year before his planned retirement.

When the kidnappers seized Abu Omar on his way to noontime prayers in Via Guerzoni, Lady met the director of Italy's anti-terrorism police for coffee. In contrast to the Italian intelligence agency, the police director knew nothing about the operation. Lady's job was that of keeping a watchful eye on him while his colleagues seized Abu Omar -- just to make sure nothing went wrong. Five days after Abu Omar had been flown to Egypt via the US Air Base at Ramstein, Germany, Lady arrived in Cairo, too.

Lady has a lot at stake in this case. If the Italian constitutional court doesn't put a halt on the trial, the state prosecutor could confiscate Lady's beloved farm. "I'll probably be convicted. But I won't go to trial, and I'll never see Italy again," he lamented to journalist Cole. But other plausible scenarios remain, too: Perhaps the former CIA agent will testify after all. He is said to be bitter about the lack of support he has received from the CIA. The only ones protected by Washington these days are the ones who give orders, and not people like him, who do the dirty work, he is said to have complained.

Indeed, Robert Lady's comments to Cole seem as threatening as they do disillusioned, and they were likely meant to sound that way. "No one's called me for support," he said. "No one has helped. I keep thinking, Fuck it, I've got nothing to lose."

KABUL: Bribery and corruption are pervasive in Afghanistan’s current government, according to a survey released on Monday that said most Afghans believe their leaders are more corrupt than the Soviet-backed government in the 1980s or the Taliban-run government in the 1990s.

About 60 per cent of respondents said the current administration is more corrupt than any other in the past two decades, said the report by Integrity Watch Afghanistan, an independent group.

Over the last five years, corruption has soared to levels not seen in previous administrations, it said. Money can buy government appointments, bypass justice or evade police, while the government is unable or unwilling to seriously tackle corruption, it said. The group said it interviewed 1,258 Afghans for the study.

The courts and the Interior Ministry were highlighted as the most corrupt institutions. The group’s executive director, Lorenzo Delesgues, pointed to weak law enforcement as a main reason for corruption and bribery.

Corruption has undermined the legitimacy of the state, Delesgues told a news conference. The group, which conducted the survey in 13 provinces, said 93 per cent of the respondents believed that bribes had to be paid for more than half of public services and administrative work. The report said impunity and unaccountability of civil servants underpinned corruption. Despite the reports of widespread bribery and corruption, 45 per cent of respondents said corruption had little or no effect on their households. The report did not provide a margin of error for the survey.

Corruption in Afghanistan is fuelled by low-paid government workers who pad their salaries by demanding bribes to process simple paperwork. Many Afghans pay bribes to avoid trouble with police, who make about $70 a month.

The country’s booming heroin trade also leads to corruption, with police and other government officials looking the other way after payoffs by farmers and drug-runners. Even Afghanistan’s anti-corruption chief, Izzatullah Wasifi, has a troubling past. A recent Associated Press investigation found he was convicted two decades ago for selling heroin in the United States.

Wasifi is adamant his drug conviction should not affect his ability to serve in government, and compares his situation to US President George W Bush, who was once arrested in 1976 for drunk driving.

He points to his record as governor of western Farah province, where opium production dropped 25 percent during his 14-month tenure before he took his current position. Officials who worked with Wasifi in Farah mostly commended his work.

The Jewish establishment claims to speak for all Jews and have Israel’s best interests at heart. In fact, the opposite is true.

Take the late February example of Israeli military using Palestinian human shields during a raid in Nablus, despite t he practice being outlawed by the Israeli High Court. Human rights groups in Israel and internationally condemned the action, but the Jewish community remained mute.

Did they agree? Is their loathing for Palestinians so deep that they can’t see the long-term ramifications? This moral degradation is a daily occurrence in the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine, and yet most Jews remain silent — complicit in the crimes.

But the times are a’ changing.

I’m a founding member of Independent Australian Jewish Voices (IAJV), a loose coalition of Jews who are articulating an alternative perspective on the Israel/Palestine conflict and challenging the Zionist establishment to justify their support for the Jewish State’s intransigence. We are true friends of Israel and the Palestinians and believe in the national aspirations of both peoples.

Our ‘Statement of Principles’ reads, in part:

We are committed to ensuring a just peace that recognises the legitimate national aspirations of both Israelis and Palestinians with a solution that protects the human rights of all.

We condemn violence by all parties, whether State-sanctioned or not. We believe that Israel’s right to exist must be recognised and that Palestinians’ right to a homeland must also be acknowledged.

As Australians we are privileged to live in a democratic State that embodies the principles of tolerance and free speech. We feel there is an urgent need to hear alternative voices that should not be silenced by being labelled disloyal or ‘self-hating.’

Uncritical allegiance to Israeli Government policy does not necessarily serve Israel’s best interests. Our concern for justice and peace in the Middle East is a legitimate opinion and should be met by reasoned argument rather than vilification and intimidation. In particular, we are concerned that the Jewish establishment does not represent the full range of Jewish opinion. Contrary to widespread concerns, anti-Semitism is not fuelled by Jews who publicly disagree with actions of the Jewish State.

Jews understand what it is to suffer racism and victimisation and therefore we are not only concerned about anti-Semitism but also the demonisation of all other minorities.

The response has been extraordinary. The mainstream press has welcomed the debate, thankful that Jews are finally willing to speak publicly and condemn the indefensible. The Jewish establishment, on the other hand, has mostly attacked the petition, its signatories, our motives and my choice of breakfast cereal (muesli, for the record).

The IAJV has invited Jews to be co-signatories to our Statement of Principles. Since its launch in February, over 440 Jews from a wide variety of backgrounds and attitudes have signed, including Professor Peter Singer, Monash University Dean of Law Arie Freiberg, Melbourne University Publishing CEO Louise Adler, academic Eva Cox, and Melbourne barrister Robert Richter QC. We probably wouldn’t agree on every detail relating to the Middle East, but we do claim that rational debate in Australia is near impossible when Jewish spokesmen (and it is always men, isn’t it?) allege anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism, or self-loathing against critics of Israel.

Then there was the sad sight of self-appointed leftist academic Philip Mendes — now warmly embraced by the Jewish establishment — drafting a counter petition defending the beleaguered Jewish community and proudly stating a commitment to a two-State solution and a host of other platitudes. Unfortunately, the wider community generally doesn’t believe Mendes and his fellow travellers anymore. By not speaking out strongly against Israel’s expanding settlement, they are allowing the Jewish State to literally get away with murder.

Another intriguing response to the IAJV petition has been the objection to our mention of ‘State-sanctioned violence’ — a clear reference to Israel (though we equally condemn Palestinian violence). For many Jews — and this has been shown in various letters in the Australian Jewish News and elsewhere — Israeli violence is not ’violence,’ merely self-defence. This Orwellian conceit gives comfort to those who choose to ignore the inhumanity of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory and focus on Israel’s supposed victimhood.

Being a Jew means different things to different people. Critics of IAJV have revealed their parochialism by condemning Jews who, previously, have never spoken out as Jews. Perhaps they should wonder why. In the UK, US and much of Europe, Jews are starting to shun decades-old Jewish groups that have simply rubber-stamped Israeli policy and refused to allow true debate across a wider spectrum.

The Jewish community needs to ask itself who is speaking up for its needs and concerns. The current leadership is simply advocating a take-no-prisoners approach that, as the BBC poll proves, is leading to Israel’s rapid isolation. Blind US support will not last forever.

IAJV shows the wider community that the ‘official’ Jewish bodies do not represent many Jews, that we have no desire to join them and want alternative ways to be heard. We plan to hold public forums in the coming months and establish IAJV as a permanent fixture in the public arena. We’re only just warming up.

About the authorAntony Loewenstein is a Sydney-based freelance journalist, author and blogger. He has written for the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Australian, The Guardian, Sydney’s Sun Herald, The Bulletin, the Washington Post, the Big Issue, Crikey, Znet, Counterpunch and others. Melbourne University Publishing has published his book on the Israel/Palestine conflict, My Israel Question (2006). His website is http://www.antonyloewenstein.com/

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Palestinian Deputy Prime Minister Azzam Al Ahmed has said Israel is not interested in reviving the peace process or implementing its obligations.

Referring to the Israeli government's decision to boycott the new Palestinian government, Al Ahmed said, "This was not unexpected as the Israelis did not approve of the Mecca deal before the formation of the unity government. The Israelis have consistently expressed a negative attitude," Palestine News Network reported.

He said it is a continuation of the regime's hawkish policy that began years ago with the siege imposed on the late Authority Chief Yasir Arafat using the same pretext that there is “no Palestinian partner.”

Meanwhile, Palestine's deputy PM described the first meeting of the eleventh government as “positive and responsible.”

The meeting was led by Authority Chief Mahmoud Abbas from the presidential offices via video conference between Ramallah and Gaza City on Sunday.

In the session, Abbas stressed the need for the new government to meet the needs of the entire Palestinian population, not one party over another.MM/BG

RALEIGH, N.C. - Four years ago in Asheville, N.C., a lawyer filed a document that contained a scandalous accusation: The U.S. attorney general had intervened in a local bank-fraud case and prevented investigators from questioning one of Congress' most powerful members, Rep. Charles Taylor.

As Washington swirls with allegations that the Justice Department and White House intervened in federal prosecutions across the country, a review shows that U.S. attorneys in North Carolina have gone after a lot of Democrats - and a few Republicans, too - during the Bush administration.

But many in the western part of the state recall a particular case a few years back that was handled quietly in the North Carolina mountains, when a pair of lawyers thought that Taylor, a North Carolina Republican, ought to be questioned over a loan-fraud case that involved the bank he owns.

"Essentially the question is, `Why was he not interrogated? Why was he not interviewed?'" asked Forrest A. Ferrell, the lawyer who leveled the charges in 2003. "He knew about it all and should've at least been interrogated about it."

Ferrell still believes that John Ashcroft, who was then the attorney general, or other top officials prevented the interrogation of Taylor. But he wouldn't go into further details last week.

When the allegations surfaced in 2003, the Justice Department had no comment when asked whether Ashcroft or his aides had blocked an investigation of Taylor. On Tuesday, the Justice Department and Taylor couldn't be reached for comment, and an assistant at Ashcroft's Washington consulting firm said he'd have no comment.

The scandal in Washington reflects the reality about U.S. attorneys: They're political appointees, but once in office they're supposed to conduct independent investigations into wrongdoing. The latest developments reveal the pressures that some U.S. attorneys have faced in recent years.

The Justice Department fired eight attorneys around the country late last year. The department initially said the attorneys had poor performance reviews, but interviews and testimony before Congress show that some of them felt pushed to step up investigations into Democrats or go lightly on Republican targets.

"What's most troubling is the pressure (on attorneys) to bring prosecutions or not bring prosecutions," said Erwin Chemerinsky, a Duke University professor of law and political science. "When they're on the job, they're not supposed to act as political officials."

In North Carolina, e-mails disclosed last week reveal that U.S. Attorney Gretchen C.F. Shappert of Charlotte was among those on the list to be fired. She later was removed, and said last week that she had no idea why she was targeted.

In the case involving Taylor, Ferrell was representing a local lawyer who was caught up in a bank-fraud scandal earlier in the decade.

The man, Thomas Jones, was convicted of trying to defraud the Blue Ridge Savings Bank of Asheville, N.C., with bad loans. Taylor, who was then the congressman for the region, owned the bank.

Testimony in the trial, along with FBI interviews that were introduced as evidence, raised questions about Taylor as well. Jones and other defendants testified that Taylor knew about and even encouraged the fraudulent loans.

At the time, Taylor held one of the most powerful posts in Congress, serving as chairman of an Appropriations Committee subcommittee. Although his subcommittee didn't have jurisdiction over the Justice Department, he held powerful sway in funding matters.

In Asheville, investigators never interrogated Taylor.

Ferrell contends that someone in Washington - either Ashcroft or his subordinates - intervened.

"My information was that the U.S. attorney general in D.C. prohibited the U.S. Attorney's Office in North Carolina from interrogating Charles Taylor," Ferrell recalled last week. He'd give no other details.

"My information was confidential," he said.

Ferrell filed a motion based on his "information and belief," requesting an investigation into prosecutorial misconduct.

His co-counsel was W. Gene Sigmon, who declined to discuss the case last week.

"I just don't even want to talk about that," Sigmon said.

The U.S. attorney for the Western District of North Carolina at the time, Robert J. Conrad Jr., filed a vigorous response, saying the claims of interference weren't true.

"The premise of the defendant's motion is simply wrong," Conrad wrote.

His response also pointed out that Ferrell had no concrete information to back up his claims.

Nothing came of the motion. Jones was caught in a separate embezzlement charge, and Ferrell withdrew from representing him.

In 2005, Conrad was appointed a U.S. district judge. He couldn't be reached for comment.

In Washington, part of the debate revolves around whether politically appointed U.S. attorneys have been able to maintain independence once in office.

In North Carolina, U.S. attorneys - all Republican since 2001 - haven't been shy about tagging Democrats.

Frank Whitney, who's now a U.S. district judge in Charlotte, served in Raleigh and covered North Carolina's Eastern District. He was previously the chairman of the Mecklenburg County Republican Party, and federal records show that he's contributed more than $10,000 to various Republican candidates and committees since 1994.

Whitney sent several Democrats to prison, including former state Agriculture Secretary Meg Scott Phipps, former Transportation Secretary Garland Garrett and former Rep. Frank Ballance and his son, Garey Ballance, a state judge.

Most recently, Whitney was the lead prosecutor in a case against North Carolina House Speaker Jim Black, who faces prison as well after pleading guilty last month to bribery and other public corruption charges. The current U.S. attorney, George E.B. Holding, is continuing the investigation. He, too, has given thousands to Republican candidates and committees.

Whitney also prosecuted Republicans, notably former state Sen. John Carrington and Larry Small, the head of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.

In the Western District, Shappert, a former assistant to Conrad, has made headlines prosecuting drug and fraud cases.

Justice Department e-mails disclosed last week to the U.S. House and Senate judiciary committees show that Shappert was on a list under the category of "USAs (U.S. attorneys) We Now Should Consider Pushing Out."

Her name was removed from the list after an official said she didn't merit removal now.

Certainly, politics plays a role in appointments.

North Carolina Sens. Elizabeth Dole and Richard Burr, both Republicans, routinely suggest people to serve as U.S. attorneys or district judges. Some, like Whitney, have political backgrounds; others don't.

Former Sen. Jesse Helms plucked Anna Mills Wagoner, the U.S. attorney for North Carolina's Middle District, from her role as chief district judge in Rowan County. It was a post she'd held for a decade, and she'd planned to seek re-election before Helms' nomination.

Since Wagoner was confirmed in October 2001, she's focused on drug and terrorism cases. Last year, she prosecuted a child pornography case against a local police chief.

Some former U.S. attorneys have run afoul of the law themselves. Former U.S. Attorney Sam Currin, who worked out of Raleigh, was a protege of former Sen. Jesse Helms and the former chairman of the state Republican Party. He was indicted last year on charges of tax-fraud conspiracy, and pleaded guilty to three charges in November.

One of the most essential elements of online political activism is that anyone can do it. The more people who are watching their elected representatives and are invested in the political process, the better. Thankfully, with some new (and a few old) tools, citizen watchdogging has gotten easier than ever.

One such tool is Open Congress. As profiled by Download Squad, MyDD, and Ezra Klein, Open Congress is an intuitive system that makes Congressional information accessible to the average person. By providing information on votes, bills, and members of Congress, Open Congress aims to increase transparency in government.

(To track your Congressperson, I strongly recommend the use of feeds whenever possible. Feeds can be read by feed readers, such as Google Reader or Bloglines. A feed reader will help you receive instant updates from feeds and quickly skim through a vast array of information on your Congressional Representatives.)

For the purposes of this tutorial, we'll be tracking Congressman Joe Knollenberg.

Voting History

To follow your member of Congress' voting record in real time, pull up Open Congress and input their name in the search field. In our case, we will enter "Joe Knollenberg" in OpenCongress' search window. This brings us to Knollenberg's OpenCongress page.

If you want to just browse through Knollenberg's recent voting behavior, you can click on "See Full Voting History". For anyone who wants to follow him more rigorously, click either of the orange buttons to access the feed.

From here, you can subscribe in your favorite feed reader and stay updated.

The Washington Post also offers an excellent U.S. Congress Votes Database, but unfortunately doesn't include the neat "Web 2.0" features of Open Congress. Open Congress' emphasis on finding relevant news articles and blog posts for specific bills provide a better understanding of a broader range of legislative proposals.

Sponsored Bills

Open Congress also provides information on the Congressperson's sponsored bills, along with a list of related news articles and blog entries that may give it context.

For example, let's take H.R. 853, which Knollenberg sponsored. The page for H.R. 853 returns blog posts critical of the bill, which may be useful to you in understanding the bill and composing your own blog entries.

Voting Record on "Major" Bills

Open Congress also offers a "Most Viewed Bills" section, which is roughly analogous to the most contentious or discussed bills of the past week. This is one of the best features of the website because it allows the user to identify which legislation is comparatively "important."

Let's take a look at how Knollenberg voted on the Employee Free Choice Act. Click "See Full Voting History," and then "Details."

You can search for your Congressperson's vote with the Ctrl+F key combination in most browsers.

Tracking Recent News with Google News

Depending on how closely you need to watch your Congressperson, you may want to keep track of every single news item that mentions them. This is very easy to do with Google News or Yahoo! News.

For Congressmen that use nicknames, make sure to search for both terms. In this case, we want to use the search term "Joe Knollenberg" OR "Joseph Knollenberg"

To catch every article as it appears, select "Sort by date." This is necessary even if you want to use a feed to track articles as they appear.

If you want to monitor news articles on a regular basis, use a feed or sign up for e-mail alerts.

Yahoo! News essentially works the same way. Yahoo's feeds are better (they don't have an annoying refresh problem that Google's have), but they don't seem to "catch" the wide range of news articles that Google does.

Finding Recent Blog Posts with Technorati

Blog posts can offer unique observations or opinions that are not mentioned in news articles. The mother of all blog search engines, Technorati, will return blog posts about a search term in reverse chronological order.

Again, the search term is "Joe Knollenberg" OR "Joseph Knollenberg"

You can browse the results like with the news search, but if you're doing this on a regular basis you should subscribe to the feed.

Tracking Campaign Contributions

Poking around campaign contributions can offer some of the best ammo for blog posts on elected officials. At the national level, Open Secrets and Political Money Line are both easy to use and self-explanatory. Simply input the name of the elected official or donor and search.

For more help, the Sunlight Foundation has also put together a comprehensive tutorial on how to use Open Secrets.

The Revolving Door

Open Secrets' Revolving Door helps identify potential conflicts of interest when Congressional staffers go to work in private industry or vice versa. The "Revolving Door" directory of members of Congress is available here.

Removed Information

In many cases, elected officials' own websites serve as fantastic sources of information for blog posts.

Unfortunately, there is still no easy way to obtain committee or floor footage online, other than through live Realplayer streams or a TV Tuner Card in your computer. Now that C-SPAN has relaxed its copyright policy, that should slowly start to change.

Right now, floor footage can be streamed live from the C-SPAN website. Committee footage can currently be streamed live from capitolhearings.org. C-SPAN is supposedly planning on expanding CapitolHearings.org to expand access to committee hearings.

Ideology, Interest Group Rankings, and Other Information

You may find these other resources useful in your watchdogging quest:

Project Vote Smart - A searchable database of elected officials and candidates that includes interest group ratings, voting records, and other information.

On The Issues - Determines positions of candidates and elected officials on key issues using voting records, newspapers, speeches, press releases, and the Internet.

Progressive Punch - A non-partisan searchable database that details how progressive members of Congress are.

Conclusion

Ultimately, online watchdogging is about bringing accountability to the electoral process. In particular, information can be found and spread without the involvement of the mainstream media. More informed voters can educate their peers and make better decisions, strengthening our democracy.

-- The Palestinians are faced with the infamous request of recognizing Israel. A request carrying various dimensions ranging from the psychological to the highly political.

Such a recognition request is not only advanced by the Israelis, but by Western countries and the Quartet as well. However, the more Palestinians are reluctant to accede, the more Israel and its proponents insist on it. This projected demand and the halt of violence have become an international prerequisite to the resumption of the peace negotiations.

The Palestinian national psyche refuses such an unconditional recognition, given that it is considered a capitulation, and a priceless concession, without any reward. In this respect, Palestinians don't admit to the supremacy of their powerful neighbor, since they have been struggling for their own recognition, which they have been denied, for decades. Unlike states, peoples usually never capitulate to victors and there is always a vanguard to wage guerrilla warfare, thereby defying the aggressor.

Palestinians believe that they are the ones who need to be recognized by Israel and the international community, and to see their rights protected. They don't accept the irrational logic of the victor and his Western allies, even though they know their side is the weaker, and that the balance of power goes against them.

Paradoxically, with all the restrictions placed, Israel and the international community are tying the hands of the Palestinians without leaving them any breathing space. They keep hammering away at Palestinians with this dubious demand of "recognition" in an attempt to break their will.

In this regard, an important question has to be addressed to the Western political mind about the moral justification of this demand and its political dimension.

Are Palestinians required to recognize the Jewish state as an absolute entity or within certain borders, and, if the latter, which borders? The pre-1967 war boundaries or the post-1967 war boundaries? Or, are Palestinians required to recognize the ugly separation wall as the final frontier?

Are Palestinians required to recognize the solidification of Jewish nationalism or Zionism, on Palestinian land? Or, is it recognition of Israel's regional supremacy, which is in question?

What about Zionist recognition for Palestinian nationalism or patriotism?

The struggle for recognition on both sides and the alignment of pros and cons provides us with insight into the nature of international politics. Although the Palestinian Liberation Organization has already used this precious bargaining card during the Oslo agreements, Israel is never tired of forever repeating the same demand. The demand itself, thus, is used as a delaying tactic to forestall any serious peaceful settlement. Any newly-formed Palestinian government has to declare its public recognition to the state of Israel, be it Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or anyone else.

In analyzing the recognition process, Francis Fukuyama wrote the following in the preface of his famous 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man: "The desire for recognition that led to the original bloody battles for prestige between two individual combatants leads logically to imperialism and world empire. The relationship of lordship and bondage, on a domestic level, is naturally replicated on the level of states, where nations, as a whole, seek recognition, and enter into bloody battles for supremacy." As an American scholar, Fukuyama is not, here, referring to Israel's wars to be recognized by Palestinians and the other Middle Eastern Arab states - he is actually referencing various nationalism-fueled European wars that occurred over the last 200 years - yet his description is fully compatible with the situation in the region.

In fact, the state of Israel, through the five or six wars it has waged against its Arab or Palestinian neighbors, has become the super power in the region, imposing itself as supreme master. Israeli nationalism or Zionism has been a vehicle for the struggle for recognition over the past century, as well as the source of intense conflicts with the emerging Arab and Palestinian nationalisms.

On the other hand, Arab nationalism started its campaign to be recognized by Western colonialist powers after World War I under the slogan of freedom and independence. While Palestinians launched their recognition struggle against British colonialism and the emerging Jewish nationalism, proponents of both Palestinian and Jewish nationalism clashed with each other, simultaneously fighting their wars against the British mandate. However, the balance of power favored Zionist ambitions, while Palestinians are still fighting for their nationalism and statehood to be recognized.

But if the struggle is driven by the desire for recognition, then it is advisable for nationalist proponents of both camps to reciprocally recognize one another's legitimacy. Consequently, the relationship of "lordship and bondage" would be abolished, making the Palestinian underdogs their own masters, while having a similar effect on the relationship between two sovereign, and mutually recognized, states.

Through his piercing historical analysis, Fukuyama believes the solution to such recognition wars lies in liberal democracies replacing the irrational desire to be recognized as greater than others, by a rational desire to be seen as an equal. "A world made up of liberal democracies, should have much less incentive for a war," he writes.

Indeed, there is substantial empirical evidence from the past 200 years that - bar the rare exception - liberal democracies do not behave imperialistically toward one another, even if they are perfectly capable of going to war with states that are not democracies, and that adhere to intrinsically different values. The demand for national recognition in Western Europe has, thus, been relinquished in favor of a universal recognition in a larger union of different European nations.

But here in the Middle East, the peoples of the region are infected by the disease of nationalism, and are still far from establishing liberal democracies based on tolerance and respect for other cultures, religions, and rights. Which is to say: we are still governed by the curse of the last centuries, with proponents of Arab, Palestinian, and Jewish nationalism condemned to fighting each other, spilling ever greater quantities of innocent blood.

Mahmoud Labadi served as the spokesperson of the Palestinian Liberation Organization in Lebanon until 1983. He was the director-general of the Palestinian Legislative Council until his retirement in 2005. Acknowledgement to the Arab Media Internet Network (AMIN).

When my book "Rich Dad's Prophecy" was released in 2002, most financial newspapers and magazines trashed it because I discussed a looming stock market crash. Ironically, much of what I predicted in the book is coming true earlier than I expected.

On Feb. 27 of this year, a 9 percent market sell-off in China sent ripples of fear through stocks markets across the world. In the United States, the Dow's one-day plunge of 416 points was the steepest decline since the market opened after Sept. 11, 2001.

So the question is: Should stock investors be worried? As you might expect, some say yes and some say no.

Correction or Crash?

Personally, if I were counting on the stock market for my retirement or to put my kids through college, I'd be worried. Why? Because from my perspective, even if the Dow were to miraculously soar through 15,000, the stock market has been experiencing a long, slow crash for years.

This February, investors witnessed a drop of $583 billion in U.S. market wealth. Many experts are quick to point out that this loss of wealth is a mere drop in the bucket when you take into account that the stock market has been going up for four years. Most market experts say that the market was due for a correction, which is true.

In fact, the recent 3.5 percent drop is miniscule when compared to the 21 percent drop of the S&P 500 back in 1987. By definition, such a small drop isn't even classified as a true correction. According to BusinessWeek, a full-fledged correction is defined as a 10 percent drop, and a bear market is defined as a 20 percent drop.

Comparing Apples to Oranges

So how can I say that the market is crashing even if it continues to go up? To see the true crash, educated investors need to compare apples to oranges, not apples to apples.

When you compare the Dow to the Dow, or the S&P 500 to the S&P 500, that's comparing apples to apples. The Dow at 12,000 appears better than the Dow at 9,000, just as an apple at $1 a pound looks better than at $1.50 a pound, even though it's still the same apple. All that's happened is the price per pound of the apple has gone up -- the apple hasn't changed.

Years ago, my rich dad taught me to be a comparison shopper, especially when it comes to investments. He said, "You need to understand value more than price. Just because the price of something goes up doesn't necessarily mean the value has gone up."

He also told me, "If prices go up without a corresponding increase in value, it means the value of the asset has actually gone down." This holds true for all assets, including stocks, bonds, and real estate.

For example, when the price of a house goes up it doesn't mean that the house is more valuable. And prices going up may mean that something else is going down in value. In today's global markets, what's going down is the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar.

The Dow vs. Gold

To get a truer picture of comparative values, compare the Dow to the price of gold. When the purchasing power of gold is compared to the purchasing power of the Dow, the Dow appears to be crashing.

That means the average investor will need at least a 15 percent annual return on their stocks or mutual funds just to stay ahead of the U.S. dollar's purchasing power erosion -- that is, just to break even.

In my earlier Yahoo! Finance columns, I used history to forecast the future by comparing the dollar to gold and oil over a 10-year period. Here's the data:

1996

2006

Percent Increase

Oil

$10/barrel

$60/barrel

500

Gold

$275/ounce

$600/ounce

118

Table updated 3/21/07.

What Next?

What this means for you depends upon your bullish or bearish outlook, your financial education, and financial experience. For example, I hear many young people today saying that the price of real estate doesn't go down. This is a naive opinion due to lack of financial education and experience. I heard similar misguided opinions about stocks in the dotcom era, just before the market crashed.

Personally, I tend to heed former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's caution about a possible recession ahead. I predict that if there is a recession, current Fed chairman Ben Bernanke (and, in an attempt to hold onto the White House, the Republicans) will flood the market with more money at lower interest rates.

Then the purchasing power of the dollar will once again drop, asset prices may rise, and the financially naive will actually believe that the value of their assets -- houses, stocks, and mutual funds -- have gone up in value.

Home loan demand drops for 1st time in 4 weeks

By Julie Haviv 1 hour, 15 minutes ago

U.S. mortgage applications fell last week for the first time in four weeks, reflecting a drop in demand for home refinancing even as interest rates hovered near recent lows, an industry trade group said on Wednesday.

The Mortgage Bankers Association said its seasonally adjusted index of mortgage application activity for the week ended March 16, which includes both refinancing and purchasing loans, decreased 2.7 percent to 672.1.

Applications, however, were 19.0 percent above their year-ago level. The four-week moving average of mortgage applications, which smooths the volatile weekly figures, was up 2.5 percent to 665.1.

Phillip Neuhart, an economic analyst at Wachovia Corp. in Charlotte, North Carolina, said the U.S. housing market has become increasingly pivotal to Federal Reserve monetary policy and right now they are taking a "wait-and-see" attitude.

"I don't think the Fed is going to drop rates in the near-term since core inflation is above their comfort zone," he said. "They are not going to cut off their nose to spite their face."

Market participants will be looking for any hints from Federal Reserve policy-makers at the conclusion of a two-day meeting Wednesday afternoon that they may be concerned about the level of subprime loan defaults and the potential impact on the U.S. economy.

"I don't see the Fed getting caught up in headline and headline risk," Neuhart said.

Rapidly rising defaults in the subprime mortgage market, which caters to borrowers with poor credit histories, and collapsing lenders may be taking a toll on home sales.

The MBA's seasonally adjusted purchase index, considered a timely gauge of U.S. home sales, fell 0.9 percent to 410.6. The index, however, was above its year-ago level of 393.6, a rise of 4.3 percent.

"With regulators looking to tighten up lending standards, it will be a supply constraint on mortgage issuance," said Neuhart. "If the supply of loans is limited, there are going to be fewer homebuyers since they can't get a mortgage."

REFINANCING SKIDS BUT ABOVE YEAR-AGO

Borrowing costs on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages, excluding fees, averaged 6.06 percent, up 0.03 percentage point from the previous week when it reached its lowest level since early December.

Observers can be forgiven for wondering why the US Congress, following years of spineless acquiescence to the Bush agenda, has suddenly developed a backbone in the case of the fired US attorneys. Mere days after Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi ripped even the pretense of resostance to Bush's war on Iran from a military spending bill, in obvious defience of the voter mandate which brought her to her present station, we see Congress as a whole sprouting large amounts of gonadal tissue and charging full-tilt boogie head-to-ghead with the White House.

Why the change? Why after years of pretending that our nation wasn;t lied into a war, years of ignoring the warrentless spying on American citizens, years of pretending that it really was necessary to torture totally innocent people to win ther war on terror, why has the firing of the US attorneys and the White House defiance of Congressional Subpoenas ignited such a political firestorm?

The reason is a simple one. We are heading into an election year and Dempocrats need an issue they can run on. But neither they nor the Republicans can dare allow any real issues to enter the public mind for this coming election.

You see, there are two kinds of scandals.

There are the real big scandals, the kind that can bring down the entire government. Scandals like the lies used to trick the nation into supporting wars of aggression. Warrentless spying. Torture. Stolen national elections. Whether the income tax is really legal. The extent to which a foreign nation influences out government. These are scandals that cannot be pegged to just a few officials or just one party. Scandals such as these delegitimize the government as a whole, and this is why nobody in the government will never address these scandals.

But then there are the small scandals, scandals which CAN be planted onto a few individuals, like Randy Cunningham, or Jack Abramoff, or onto one political party, such as New Hampshire phone jamming.

These scandals are "safe" to play politics with because while individual players may win or lose, the system as a whole is kept safe.

And this is why Attorney-gate has exploded across the media and Washington DC. It is safe to play with. It is safe to use for campainging in 2008. Regardless of the outcome, it does not threaten the government as a whole. It doesn't threaten the push for more war. It does not threaten AIPAC. Indeed behind the furor of thr White House battle with Congress regarding subpoenas and Executive Priviledge, the WAR, and AIPAC can move forward more quickly with the light of public awareness now safely pointed onto something relatively benign and harmless in the greater scheme of things.

Indeed it may be that this contest over the subpoenas is simply a device to allow Congress to act like they still have a function on the running of this nation, posing and preening into the 2008 election season, even as everyone dutifully marks time and goes through the legal motions to run out the clock on the Bush administration while leaving the war machine intact for his successor.

I know that we are all excited to see Bush squirm in some measure of legal troubles for all that he has done, but really, considering what he HAS done and gotten away with, does this whole affair not seem like a tempest in a teapot, and worse, a stage-managed one at that?

It does to me. No matter what happens in Attorney-gate, it won;t really change anything. The wars will go on., Iran will be invaded, AIPAC will still spy on us and bribe our Congress, and rule us covertly for Israel's benefit. None of the real issues that we face are addressed or affected by Attorney-gate... which is why it is such big news.